If you like Nutella, the chocolate hazelnut spread used widely in Europe you might like to try this sweet banana-chocolate version from the World Market. The flavor is pretty strong, with a significant banana flavor which is very spreadable on just about anything. It is very good, if not a little strange.

Unlike Nutella, which after you get used to the idea of spreadable chocolate tastes normal, the World Market version gives you the idea that this is artificial in a way. One of the best uses of Nutella is to spread it on fresh-made crepes and I bet this banana chocolate spread would work very well for that also.

Since it is so spreadable you can use it on any type of bread. To this point I have not heard of it being used in actual cooking, and I am not sure how well it would hold up to any type of heat. It seems like you basically spread this type of food on anything and everything. Celery, carrots, breads, crepes...I guess it can replace or complement cream cheese. We will have to do some tests to find out.

A couple of months ago I was going through the local health food store, looking around at all the various brands of milk when I came upon a cereal that looked very appetizing.

It was "organic", and expensive, but I figured it would go well with the excellent quality "organic" milk I was looking for.

Sometimes packaging tells the story and sometimes it seems like you are eating packaging. In this case Nature's Path cereal was more like packaging.

The pomegranate pieces were small, or missing, so they could not contribute to the taste very much. I can't even remember the cherries, they were so small too. But the real problem was the texture and taste of the granola, which was more like puffed rice, or something similar.

The one thing that packaged health foods have in common is the lack of salt, and given the low sugar content the badness was multiplied.

There are a lot of great packaged foods from health food stores. There are great soy ice creams, rice ice creams, actual ice creams...but since most of that is ice cream maybe all the packaged food is lacking something.

Maybe the problem is that by creating a food to be something it is not, you disrupt the taste in whatever it really is.

Real Swiss Cheese

We bought a bottle of Sicilian Olive Oil from Trader Joes the other day to try with some olive bread and nice Balsamic Vinegar. The olive oil was quite different. Very strong and peppery with some fruit behind it.

It seems like most quality olive oils these days seem to be made very much the same, but this one was really different.